Moonrise
by ananiah
Summary: Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons AU: The Guardians have had their reign, and now it's time for them to fall. Their Project is getting scrubbed from the lineup and replaced by the shiny, new Moonrise Program. And the leader of Moonrise's poster team? His name is Jack Frost.
1. Good Morning

**Good Morning**

06:15, 23 January 2034

He's drowning. Again. He's had this dream a thousand times; the cold, the dark, the fear. Which is always strange because he can't feel the cold anymore. The dream doesn't scare him like it used to. He's seen (and done) things that put this nightmare to shame.

Jack squints up, seeing halogen lights shining dimly through a sheet of ice. Sighing internally, he swims up and breaks through the ice and into the light.

"Rise and shine," a familiar voice chimes drily.

"Morning to you too." Jack yawns and stretches.

Hiccup's huge obsidian dragon jumps on Jack's bed, purring contentedly. "I heard we're getting a new recruit," Hiccup says. "Her name's Rapunzel."

"Weird name."

"Yeah. Toothless and I are going down to the mess hall. See you there." The best part about the guy's barracks is the fact that they're connected to the cafeteria. Basically, midnight snacks.

Jack yawns again, checking the clock with a glance, and it's six fifteen. Brilliant. He's late again.

He reluctantly gets up and starts rummaging around in his closet for a clean jumpsuit. They're all identical, white and grey with colored stripes along the shoulders and forearms. His are blue, for water elementals. Just before he leaves the room, he snatches up his tall, hooked staff from the floor.

The halls are already empty by the time he's outside, and Jack ends up running to the cafeteria so he isn't too late. He bursts into the caf at twenty before, nearly knocking over Merida before he skids to a stop.

"Thought you'd fallen and you couldn't get up," Merida says by way of greeting. "We were gonna send a search party."

"Thanks, Mer," Jack says in his most sincere tone of voice. "I'm gonna go get breakfast." It's a rather unappealing fare of scrambled eggs (made from powder), fruit (frozen, shipped here from Mexico), and toast (stale). Mmm.

"What's the schedule for today?" Jack asks Hiccup when he returns to their table.

"Huh? Oh, we have school before training in the cathedral. Just like always." Hiccup scratches his dragon between the beast's eyes, and the inaptly named Toothless meows in delight. He's kind of like a giant cat. Made of obsidian. And equipped with retractable diamond teeth.

Merida idly toasts her bread, burning a handprint on both sides of the slice. "Hope we're not up against Delta Team again. They're no fun to fight."

"Hey, I heard that!" Kevin MacGuffin shouts angrily in her direction. "You wanna go, Red?"

Merida slams her toast down on the table, sending blackened crumbs all over the table. "Do you wanna live to see another day?" she asks, eyes narrowed dangerously. Fire forms in her hands, vaguely shaped like a strung bow.

"Okay, guys, let's all take a chill pill and save it for the Cathedral, all right?" Jack says, holding out his hands in a pacifying manner. On his left, Hiccup restrains Toothless from taking a chunk out of the hapless Delta.

One of the guards comes over to intervene, but by that time everyone's sitting at their respective tables again. Merida sweeps her crumbs back onto her plate.

Ah, now for the highlight of Jack's day. School. He's only being half-sarcastic. They take classes called Battlefield Tactics and Advanced Espionage, and they learn the basics of dozens of languages. At an hour each, with a forty-five minute break for lunch, school takes up half the day. Plus "homework," which is ridiculous because none of them have a home.

His first class of the day is Weapons (Firearms, Knives, and Other Related Handheld Devices), with the most boring professor of them all, Mr. Brown. Kind of ironic.

"Today, class, we shall be studying the art of bōjutsu, fighting with a staff known as a bo," Mr. Brown announces.

Jack grins. He's wicked good at this.

"No, Mr. Frost, you must use a plain quarterstaff for today's lesson. We will be studying basic strikes today. Now, each one of you has been equipped with a bo. Please go to your lockers and retrieve them."

Jack sighs and reluctantly leans his staff against the wall. The new one, straight and made out of heavy oak, feels completely wrong in his hands.

"Please line up in groups of four, facing me. I will demonstrate the twelve basic strikes, and you will attempt to copy me.

"The first is a descending strike to the top of the head, as such, left hand at the back end of the staff, right hand about two feet in front of it with the pinky finger of the right hand away from you. The second strike is with the hands reversed. To transition from one strike to the next..." Mr. Brown continues in his monotone voice.

Jack knows this stuff by heart, even with a plain bo instead of his shepherd's hook, but Merida and several other students keep hitting themselves and everyone else with their staffs. He snickers quietly, and Merida zaps him with a little bolt of lightning.

After about thirty minutes of this, Mr. Brown switches to a different series of strikes.

"Now, hold your staff so your hands divide it into thirds. Left hand palm down, right hand palm up, right side of the staff held higher than the left. Yes, very good. Jack, would you care to demonstrate with me? Yes, you, boy."

Jack can feel his ears turning pink. "Yes, sir."

"Now, class, the first strike is up high, like so..." Jack promptly zones out for the rest of his explanation (otherwise he'd fall asleep), waiting until he can actually do something. Finally they go over the sequence, and their bos make loud clacks that resonate through the air. The motions come easily to Jack, even with a glorified stick instead of his staff.

"Now go get a partner and practice!"

Hiccup instantly grabs Jack's sleeve. "I am not getting whacked by Merida's bo again."

Unfortunately, the bo is definitely not Hiccup's strong suit, and Jack spends most of his time keeping Hiccup from accidentally hitting them both over the head.

"No, Hic, the first one is just a normal strike," Jack tries to explain. "And the second is less a whack than a tap."

Toothless eyes the staff warily, like he's wondering whether to chew it or set it on fire. "Like this?" Hiccup asks.

"Yeah. More or less." Jack tries to teach Hiccup the third strike, but the other boy's arms keep getting tangled up.

Finally, they put their bos back into their lockers, and Jack gets his real staff back.

Their next class is, unfortunately, Foreign Language. They spend bare months on each one, and they're all blurring in Jack's mind. Today they're starting a new one, Italian, when just yesterday it was Swahili. And the worst part? Merida and Hiccup pick up languages like they're nothing.

"Giacomo?" Jack asks. "No way are you calling me that."

Merida snickers. "È il tuo nome in italiano."

"Merida, per favore." Hiccup says, voice purposefully exasperated.

"Non io piace-"

"Non mi piace, peasant-"

"Fine! Non mi piace italiano!"

Ms. Connolly instantly swoops down upon them. "Davvero non ti lo piace? Perchè? Mi piacciono tutte le lingue straniere, e anche posso parlare in quasi tutti."

Fabulous.

After an hour of foreign language hell, they are shunted off to Advanced Espionage, and after that, to Tactics.

Everyone's starving by the time lunch rolls around.

"Are you sure you can eat all that?" Hiccup asks warily, looking pointedly at Merida's plate. It's piled high with basically every type of food the caf offers, but mostly meat.

She glances up, a chicken leg in each hand. "Watch me."

They spend another three hours in school, learning Math and Science and English (Jack feels insulted that this is a class. English is the only language he really knows!).

He spills acid on the tabletops in Chem (again). At least it's not burning a hole like last time, though he's not sure he likes the way it's sizzling...

"Hey, Mer, who do you think we'll go up against today?" he asks, leaning against the tabletop carelessly.

"Does it matter? We'll beat them into the dust no matter who they are," she answers arrogantly, flagging down the teacher to help with cleanup.

Jack nods. "And the new girl? She's probably going to be on Alpha Team with us. Well, unless she's awful and we get assigned Katherine."

"We'll whip her into shape," Merida says somewhat threateningly.

Hiccup leans across the lab bench in surprise. "Who's getting whipped? I thought that was illegal."

"The new girl," Jack chimes in. "Rapunzel."

"Everyone start cleaning up!"

* * *

"Alpha Team, you will be playing against Gamma Team in the cathedral. Beta Team will face off with Delta in the main compound."

Beta and Delta start grumbling. Training in the compound is no fun, especially when the cathedral is so great for aerial fights.

Jack grins to Hiccup and Merida. "Can't wait."

* * *

Alpha Team is set up by Lunar Lake, so named for its half moon shape. Half the lake is surrounded by pines, the other half by the far left edge of the Cathedral Plains. They set up base camp deep in the Lakeside Forest. Gamma's probably in the Far Forest, on the other side of the Cathedral Plains, somewhere near the mud flats.

"All right, guys," Jack says. "We're up against Gamma. Their leader is a water elemental like me, Jamie Bennett-"

"You can skip the intro, Frost. We know these guys already. And they know us," Merida points out.

"Ok then, no refresher. Hiccup, you guard. Mer and I will go get their flag," Jack tells them.

"Wait, wait, hold up. I'm always the one who stays behind. Not this time," Hiccup interjects. Toothless pushes up against Hiccup's heels meaningfully, emerald eyes boring into Jack's.

"Mer, you wanna stay back?" Jack asks. Knowing her, probably not.

"Of course not! We'll take the flag with us." Merida beams, picking up their silver flag and tucking it into her belt.

Hiccup adds, "And I can leave a few stone animals behind to confuse whoever comes after us."

Jack grins slowly. "Okay. New plan."

* * *

**Author's Note**: Disclaimer: I'm sure I don't even need this thing here, but anyway. I own none of this.

_Moonrise_ WILL be updated regularly! Maybe even more than once a week if you're lucky :D

Please review! I love hearing from you guys!

***Edited 21/10/13

Chapter Soundtrack: Welcome to the Black Parade, My Chemical Romance


	2. War Games

**War Games**

16:30, 23 January 2034

They'd crept around the plains, circling for about a mile past the main complex, and the pines of the Far Forest loomed before them now. Jack never really paid attention in Advanced Espionage, even though it wasn't too bad as classes went, so Merida had to keep hissing at him to keep his head down and not make noise.

"Mer, you'd better secure that flag," Jack mutters. Merida's by the complex, hiding the flag on the left side of the building, the side that faces away from the forest. Jack's fairly sure there's some kind of reg against that, but hey. All's fair in love and war.

Off in the distance, he can just see Cupcake patrolling around the forest's edge. She's almost as scary as Merida when she gets angry, and that's saying something.

He creeps down towards Merida. Hiccup circles the other way, to the far side of the forest, with Toothless close behind.

"You ready, Red?" he whispers.

"When you are," she shoots back.

Jack catches a glimpse of Jamie's blue, white, and grey clothes before Merida attacks, a fire arrow just grazing the other boy's arm.

"Remember, Mer. Casualties are frowned upon," he reminds her, still smiling.

"Shut yer gob," she growls, peculiar accent coming out like it always does when she's annoyed.

Jack stands up and stretches in plain view of Cupcake and Jamie. Then he takes aim with his staff and shoots bolt after bolt of frost lightning into the forest, freezing everything in sight.

The two Gammas bolt, but not before Cupcake retaliates, palms outstretched, fire raining down on Jack.

He's seen this trick a thousand times from Merida. He spins his staff around, creating a shield of ice that deflects the fire. Another twirl, and the ice dissipates.

They chase after Jamie and Cupcake, twigs catching hair and faces. Jamie's left behind long trails of ice and mud, meant to slow them down, but Merida burns the mud to a crisp and Jack melts the ice down.

Sticks snap behind them, and Jack whirls around just in time to see Pippa blast him with a gust of air. The blow that's meant to knock him off his feet just tousles his hair and tugs at his clothes.

Pippa makes a distressed face and tries again, but Jack's ready for her this time. He freezes her feet to the ground and her wrists to a nearby tree, careful not to let her bare skin touch the ice. Frostbite won't win him any favors.

He points his staff at her chest. "Dead."

Pippa sighs. A red X illuminates on her uniform, signifying that she's out of the game.

The ground beneath his feet quakes just a bit, and Jack jumps into the nearest tree just in case.

It's definitely Monty, but the earth elemental is hiding outside Jack's range of view. He frowns. Merida is a few hundred feet away, probably fighting Jamie. So where's Cupcake?

Jack doesn't have enough time to be worried, because his tree starts to fall over. Without thinking, he throws himself into the next tree. The branch knocks the breath out of his lungs and as this tree starts to fall as well, Jack realizes Monty is trying to steer him a certain way.

He falls off the branch, nearly hitting his head on a rock in the ground. And then he runs.

Jack taps his staff against the dirt and slicks everything down with ice as he goes, trying to find Monty. He shoots a blast of ice at a patch of white in the forest and Merida lets out a yell. "That's me, you idiot!"

"Sorry!" Jack grits his teeth and stops, thinking hard. Monty's terrified of confrontation, so he's either far away, or somewhere he can't be touched...

"Aha!" Jack stares intently down at the ground, looking for something, anything. He gives up after a moment and just starts blasting the earth with frost lightning. The ground cracks out of nowhere, and Jack catches a glimpse of Monty being buried under frozen dirt.

"Uh oh." Well, he's an earth elemental, so...

The icy dirt blows back in Jack's face, bowling him over, and he's stuck facing Monty. He's dropped his staff and it's lost in the dirt, but Jack doesn't stop to look for it before he throws two straight left punches intended to distract. The third punch comes from the right and hits Monty's nose.

The other boy retaliates with a wild swing, eyes watering from the blow, and Jack ducks easily. As he comes back up, he catches Monty's jaw in a left uppercut, snapping the other boy's mouth closed. Jack slams him with an elbow and a kick and Monty falls over limply. He grabs Monty's hand and twists his entire arm in a way arms aren't meant to go, careful not to dislocate anything, and the other boy rolls onto his side. Jack pulls water from the humid air and turns it into an ice dagger. "Dead," he says, and a red X appears on Monty's chest.

"Not cool, man," Monty mumbles, holding his bleeding nose.

Jack smiles sheepishly. "Sorry. I lost my staff." They both search for the staff before Jack finds it under a mound of permafrosted dirt.

"See you and Pippa later," he says.

"Good luck."

Jack runs back to the small clearing where he saw Merida, but he finds Hiccup and Cupcake instead. Both have Xes glowing on their jumpsuits.

"Wow, Hiccup. How'd you die?"

"If you have to know, it was Jamie. I thought he was you." Toothless growls in Jack's direction, emerald eyes glinting as if Jack personally offended him.

"Oh. Sorry?" he offers.

Hiccup just rolls his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. I thought I saw Merida by the swamps in the south."

"Hey, dead men don't tell tales!" Cupcake protests.

"Fine." Hiccup falls silent.

Jack waves goodbye and runs south. Burns scorched into the trees mark Merida's path. Hah. Even Princess-Always-Hits-the-Bullseye misses sometimes. She'll never hear the end of that from him.

"Merida!" he shouts, seeing her familiar white, grey, and red clad form.

"I'm dead," she snaps moodily. Her fire bow is clenched in her hands, burning almost blue with her anger. Which is really the most terrifying thing about her. When she's pissed, not just angry but like about-to-kill-you furious, she turns cold and glares nuclear missiles.

"You better get that flag, Jack," she says, voice flat.

"Yeah, sure. You can always trust me." He shoots her a beaming smile that neither of them believe.

In another clearing, Jack finds Gamma Team's flag in plain view. A trap, if he ever saw one.

"Jamie...?"

"SNEAK ATTACK!" Jamie shouts, completely defeating the purpose of a sneak attack.

Jack's starting to suspect that what makes Jamie a good fighter is the fact that he's so childish. People are less likely to punch a little kid than a snarky teenager.

Jack twists away from Jamie and shoots a blast of ice in his direction. Jamie catches the ice and slings it back around where Jack used to be. Too bad he's already somewhere else.

Concentrating hard, Jack slams his staff into the ground and brings all the humid air in the cathedral over their heads. Then, with a bolt of ice lightning in the gathering clouds, it starts to snow. The effort leaves him lightheaded, but he shakes it off after a moment.

"Holy... You made it snow! In the Cathedral!" Jamie gapes at the sky. Apparently he's never seen that trick before, which Jack was banking on.

He runs up to the flag, and just as his fingers are about to touch the silver fabric, something loops around his ankle and yanks him away. "Sorry, Jack," Jamie says cheerfully, snapping his water whip and making Jack fall on his back. He notices the slight way Jamie's favoring his right arm, the one Merida nicked with her arrow.

"Hey, no hard feelings." Jack freezes the water and yanks out of its grasp, shattering the ice.

Jamie aims a sloppy kick in his direction, prompting Jack to say, "There are four counts to a kick, Jamie. The actual kicking bit is only the second. And lean into the kick, not away. Like this!" On the word "this," Jack hits Jamie none too gently in the side with a roundhouse.

Then, using his staff, Jack spins the other boy around and tosses him into the bushes, sprinting back to the flag and snatching it up off the ground.

"Aw, come on," Jamie complains. "That was no fair."

Jack just laughs, helping Jamie up. "Hey, guys! We won."

Merida grins. "And in record time, too."

"Hey, what was up with you and Hiccup? You were really off your game today." Jack dusts off Jamie's clothes, and the younger boy shakes him off.

Merida had been watching their fight, and she's realized how much Jack cares for everyone else, especially younger kids like Gamma. Though that doesn't mean he goes easy on them. She studies him pensively.

"Whatcha thinking about, Red?"

"Nothing." She fiddles with her bow. "So, should we go watch Beta and Delta in the training room?"

"Yeah, sure." They join back up and walk to the main compound. Merida sheepishly retrieves Alpha Team's flag from the left side of the building, earning glares from the other team.

"Isn't there some kind of reg against that?" Jamie wonders.

"Probably." Merida expertly ties the flag around her wrist, wishing she had pockets.

Jack trips over Toothless going into the building. There are fresh gashes and scorch marks in the white walls, and Jack's fairly sure Astrid is responsible for all of them. Her favorite weapon is a war axe as heavy as Toothless.

Meek little Molly Hooper cowers under her, in the shadow of Astrid's axe, and Astrid says, "Dead."

Flynn Rider seems to have just sat back and watched it all, leaning against the wall coolly. Typical.

"Another win for Beta Team,"Jack comments drily to Merida.

Katherine Shalazar and Ianto Jones are still in the game too, but the entire Delta team is out, which is really only to be expected.

"I think we should go against Beta," Merida says. "Just for fun."

They go eat dinner instead. Jack was almost afraid Astrid would take her up on that offer for a fight.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Infinite thanks to my beta nightfuries and my other beta, who is not on FF.n, laisai (since nightfuries will be sans internet for two weeks, r.i.p.). You guys are awesome!

Here's your chapter a few days early :) because you are all so awesome! Thanks for the reviews and favorites and follows :)

Disclaimers still apply, I haven't upped and bought the franchise in the last few days.

Please review!

Chapter Soundtrack: Fistful of Silence, the Glitch Mob


	3. Assigned

Assigned

07:00, 24 January 2034

In the morning, they're all surprised, and not in a good way, when the intercom comes on after breakfast. "Students, please proceed to your classes. Alpha Team, report to floor three immediately," a familiar artificial voice says.

"Uh oh," Jack mutters.

"What did you do this time?" Astrid demands, eyes narrowed.

"Nothing," Jack says truthfully.

* * *

Floor three is a maze of closed doors and stainless steel halls. Why steel and not ordinary drywall, no one wants to guess.

"Please proceed to your left," the smooth voice says.

They proceed to their left.

Everything feels off in here, too clean and shiny. Toothless keeps getting surprised by his own reflection. Jack might have laughed at that in a different time, but right now, he's scared stiff.

There's only one door in this hall, oak instead of steel. Jack looks closer and realizes that someone's carved a moon and stars into the door, floating over a planet.

The door swings open without prompting.

"Please, come in. There's someone I'd like you three to meet."

None of them want to be the first one in. Finally Merida shoves Jack inside, and his ankles get tangled around yards and yards of long... golden... hair?

The young woman sitting in the chair facing away from the door jumps. "Oh, I'm sorry about that," she apologizes, starting to pull her hair out from under him.

Jack stammers a reply while trying to untangle his feet.

Merida sighs gustily and pitches in.

Hiccup just tries to stop Toothless from licking the new girl's face.

"I'm Rapunzel," she says after her hair's been sorted out.

"Jack Frost. And these are my friends, Merida DunBroch and Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third." The reply is standard, automatic.

"Please, Alpha Team, sit down," the man behind the desk says. Jack can't quite describe him. Round-faced like the moon, dressed in white. He blends in with the room's color scheme, but his eyes are bright blue, vibrant and startling. Like Jack's.

They sit hesitantly, feeling entirely out of place among all the white and metal.

Rapunzel is around Jack's age, with extremely long golden hair. She's wearing a clean uniform, white, grey, and yellow, with her last name and number stitched above her heart in neat letters. 016CORONA.

"Meet Rapunzel Corona, your new team member. Rapunzel, this is the Alpha Team. Our best fighters, with the strongest powers.

"Oh, do forgive me for not introducing myself. I'm Mr. Lunar. I run the Moonrise Project. Now, I believe it's time for you to go to school." The strange man waves them out of the room abruptly.

"So... Rapunzel," Jack says.

"Mm-hmm," she hums. Her hair drags down the halls for twenty feet, somehow not collecting dust along the way.

"It's time for school," he says unnecessarily.

"So, do you guys live here?"

"Yeah."

Rapunzel twirls a piece of her hair. "Is his name really Hiccup?"

Hiccup snaps, "Yes, his name is Hiccup."

"Aww, what a cute dragon! What's his name?" Rapunzel scratches Toothless behind the dragon's ear, and he purrs contentedly.

"Traitor," Hiccup complains. "Oh, Toothless. His name is Toothless."

Rapunzel curiously looks into the dragon's open mouth. "Wow, he really-"

Toothless's teeth suddenly descend from their gums, sparkling menacingly.

"Oh, wow. Why... Why is he called Toothless, then?"

"Because when I first made him, I forgot the teeth," Hiccup admits.

* * *

"The essay's due today?" Jack staggers, clutching his staff. "Where was I when we found out?"

"In class with everyone else," Hiccup says. "You wanna edit mine during lunch?"

Jack sputters. "I thought it was due on Friday!"

"It was due on Friday, but the date got changed. You'd know too if you paid attention." Merida leans over to Rapunzel and whispers, "He's always asleep in English class."

"Mer, this isn't funny. I can't just not turn in an essay!" Jack sits down heavily outside the Weapons classroom.

"Don't worry, Jack," Rapunzel says. "I... can help you during lunch. If you want." She smiles nervously, ducking her head. "Edit and stuff. I probably haven't read the book, but I'm good with grammar."

"Thank-" he starts to say.

Mr. Brown demands, "Are you four coming in? Or shall I be forced to take disciplinary action?"

During class, Rapunzel memorizes the bojutsu sequences nearly as fast as Jack remembers them. It had been awhile since he actually practiced the beginner's kata. He notices an unusual, stiff quality to her strikes and blocks, like she knew the moves but had no idea how to execute them in reality.

And (this is what really gets him) in Foreign Language, they find out she already speaks Italian. Fluently.

She only has problems during Advanced Espionage. It's pretty hard to sneak around with all that long, blonde hair trailing behind her, even when it's braided. And during Tactics, it's clear she's not willing to actually kill people. All her plans seem to involve more talking than fighting.

During lunch, she becomes instant friends with a Delta named Pascal and a Beta called Flynn Rider. Jack really hates that guy sometimes, especially that smarmy smile he slaps on whenever a girl looks his way. But even he has to admit that Flynn can be fun to play tricks with. He gets the craziest ideas (that usually involve stealing something).

Rapunzel takes pity on him halfway through lunch and reviews his essay, pointing out grammatical errors. "I've never read this... Ethan Frome book, but it seems kind of strange that a pickle dish represents a relationship..."

"Ha, tell me about it! Unfortunately, it's all I really remember from class discussion." Jack cards his hands through his hair. His essay is worse than half-baked, scribbled hastily in pencil on unlined paper. He wishes fervently there was some way he could type it up, but there isn't time.

"Well, I think it's as good as it's going to get. You should write it on a clean piece of paper, at least," she says, eyeing his messy work apprehensively.

During Math, Jack doodles on his graph paper and folds a paper airplane out of the worksheet. He takes aim at Hiccup's head and throws it when the teacher's back is turned.

"What was that for?" Hiccup whispers furiously.

"Mister Haddock, is there something you'd like to share with the class?" the teacher asks, voice deceptively even.

"No, sir," Hiccup says meekly. He turns around and shoots an aggravated glare at Jack.

When English class rolls around, Jack can't find it in him to really care about his impending F anymore. His teacher sighs, almost as if he expected Jack would one day disappoint him in this way.

Chemistry can't be over soon enough, until it is.

"The Beta, Gamma, and Delta teams will be divided according to element. Fire and Earth will play against Water and Air in the cathedral. Alpha Team has been reassigned to training with their new team member in the main compound."

"This is going to be fun," Merida says, grinning widely.

Rapunzel twirls a piece of her hair and stares at the weapons lining the far wall with a worried expression.

"Battle axe," Hiccup suggests sarcastically.

"Or a morningstar," Jack adds.

They all start arguing over various weapons, each one more ridiculous than the last, and when they finally look back to Rapunzel, it's clear she's already chosen. "Is this okay?" she asks tentatively.

"Uh..." Hiccup says.

"Where did you find that?" demands Merida.

"It's a frying pan," Jack says unnecessarily.

"It was just here." Rapunzel flips the pan in her hands and catches it again.

Merida sighs. "All right, Blondie. Let's see what you can do. Jack, you attack. Rapunzel, you defend."

"Hey, don't tell me what to do. You fight."

Merida shrugs and says, "Fine then." She walks over to the weapons wall and takes down a one-and-a-half-handed sword. "Sure you don't want something else?"

"Positive." Rapunzel holds her long, blonde hair in one hand and the frying pan in another. Jack wonders how she's going to fight with her hair. And a freaking saucepan.

Merida attacks without warning, sword sending up sparks on Rapunzel's frying pan. Rapunzel's green eyes narrow in determination, and she loops her hair around Merida's arm and yanks.

Merida just barely stops herself from giving Rapunzel an unsolicited haircut, tripping over her own feet instead. She growls and keeps going until she's behind Rapunzel. The other girl whirls around, frying pan aimed at Merida.

The weapons clang again, and Merida deflects the pan with a quick flick of her wrist, sending the kitchen appliance to the floor with another crash. Rapunzel drops her hair and brings her hands together.

The air pressure plummets, and Rapunzel releases a whirlwind inside the training room.

"Not in here!" Merida shouts. That thing could tear the whole place apart.

Rapunzel nods, crunching the mini-tornado in her hands. "Sorry."

"No worries. And it's your turn now, Frost," Merida tells him. She turns around and hangs her sword back up on the wall.

"I really don't like it when you tell me what to do," Jack says, even though it doesn't really matter.

Rapunzel attacks first, hair snapping out like a whip. He doesn't even bother blocking the obvious feint. Instead, he sends blast after blast of ice from his staff, making Rapunzel drop everything and dodge. She squeaks when one grazes her side.

"Easy, Frost," Mer barks.

"Yeah, I am going easy!" he protests. It isn't his fault that air is the weakest element. Jack wishes futilely that there was a lake or something nearby.

Gale force winds swirl around Rapunzel, and she knocks him off his feet with a blast of air. Jack gets up quickly and shoots a bolt of frost lightning to her left, making her shy away. She's floating off the ground, toes just grazing the white floor.

It starts snowing, little flakes of the stuff falling from nowhere.

Jack can't get anywhere near her, but he deflects her bursts of air with walls of ice. Finally, he breaks the stalemate by sending a wave of snow at her and freezing her feet to the ground. Snow and frost creep up her ankles. If he wasn't holding back so much, the fight would have been over a heck of a lot sooner.

"You win, Jack," Rapunzel says. "Can you unfreeze my feet?"

"Oh, right." Don't want her to get cold feet.

An electronic voice breaks into the conversation. "Alpha team, please report to floor three."

Merida sighs dramatically. "Now? Why now? Jack?"

"I swear, I didn't do anything. Stop looking at me like that!" Jack jams the elevator button with the end of his staff, sending frost crackling over the plastic. "Oops."

The doors ding open, a surprisingly cheerful noise for in the stark white room.

Oh, why did he forget about the essay?

* * *

"I swear to God, Jack, it's not the essay. Why would Hiccup, Rapunzel and I be here if it was?" Merida strides confidently down the steel halls, far in front of everyone else.

"I know, but..." He taps his staff against the walls, and frost blooms on the metal.

The oak door to Mr. Lunar's door seems to sense them approaching, and it swings open of its own accord.

"Alpha Team. How are you doing? Is Rapunzel settling in well?" Mr. Lunar inquires. "Please, sit. I have a very... special project for you all."

Merida says warily, "What kind of special?" Only Rapunzel sits down, and Toothless takes the opportunity to sprawl over her lap.

"My sponsors are curious to see how you'll behave in the field."

"We're going out?" Jack asks, blue eyes wide. "Like, in the real world?"

Mr. Lunar nods. "It's an assassination, clean and simple. Your target is part of a group formerly known as the Guardians..."

* * *

**Author's Note:** Grazie mille alla mia beta, laisai :D

Again, disclaimers. And please review!

Chapter Soundtrack: A Well Respected Man, the Kinks; bonus song for next week: Spies, Coldplay


	4. Seraphina

Seraphina

19:00, 24 January 2034

Fear. He'd never admit it to anyone just how good it tasted, tinged with color and raw emotion. The way the fear twisted under his touch, running wild like a nightmare. He loved nightmares, too.

The fear that rolled off that moon-faced, meddling fool was exquisite.

Pitch moves through the shadows, quiet as nightfall, until he's close enough to touch the blonde girl's hair.

"...clean and simple. They were once called the Guardians."

The snowy boy repeats, "Once called the Guardians?"

"Yes. Have you heard, perhaps, of the Nightmare King? Pitch Black?"

_That used to be a nickname_, Pitch complains in his head. _They were both nicknames._

"No..." The snowy boy looks confused. "Who's he?"

"He's all over the news."

_Thanks to you._

The boy with the dragon says, "And that means what, exactly...?"

Lunar looks at the dragon boy. "He's a threat, a terrorist. He has a way with fear; he can twist it to his own purposes, make you see things that aren't real."

Hey, you got what you wanted. Don't kill the messenger...

"What about the other Guardians?" the redhead asks.

"They're dangerous too," Lunar lies.

_You're just scared. A scared little man who hides behind children._

Lunar lays out five files on his desk. From the shadows, Pitch leans over and reads the title of the one on top.

**01 PITCHINER, KOZMOTIS**

He can just see Sandy's number, **02**, on the file below it.

"Black controls shadows, darkness, and fear. **02**, the Sandman, is psychic..." Lunar lists their powers out. Even little Tooth is included, though she hardly poses a threat to anyone. Unless, of course, that person has poor dental hygiene...

"Wings?" The dragon boy looks skeptical. "How did that happen?" The dragon in the girl's lap shuffles its own wings, black and shiny as obsidian. Maybe they _are_ obsidian; Pitch doesn't know. He's seen some pretty strange things in his day.

He did not just use the phrase 'in his day.'

"She has an unusual mutation. She doesn't really look human now," Lunar says dismissively. "Though the others do not display the same level of mutation. All the Guardians show surprisingly high proficiency with all types of combat, but those are the only similarities we've found."

"So you want them dead?" the snowy boy asks.

Lunar nods. "They're dangerous now."

Aren't you awfully quick to accept that? He never really told you why he wanted all of us dead. I know you're smarter than that, frost boy. So think!

"You'll be moving out tomorrow."

"What about Rapunzel?"

"She'll be fine."

_...What do you have planned?_

* * *

He's twenty thousand leagues under the sea, in shadow and darkness. Normally he'd find this incredibly amusing and even crack a few Nautilus jokes (to himself), but now was not the time for joking.

Pitch teleports away from the huge dome (it's called the 'cathedral'), and when he exits the shadows he nearly trips over Sandy and drips water all over the shorter man.

"Pardon me." Pitch really hates getting Sandy aggravated. "North! Everyone! You will not believe what Lunar's just planned."

Tooth flutters down from the rafters of Santoff Claussen, pink wings a blur. "Hi, Pitch! How did it go?" Without warning, she drops onto his back and hugs him tight. He's rather thankful she's still practically a child. "Eew, you're all wet!"

Before he can answer, North says loudly in that loud, thick Russian accent, "What is big news, Pitch?" Pitch realized long ago that North had no inside voice.

"Yeah, what's the big deal?" Aster demands. He's painting another egg as he asks, for some unascertainable reason.

"Lunar's dispatching his latest crack team to kill us all," Pitch says bluntly.

Tooth squeaks. "All of us? Why?"

Pitch doesn't say. It would only hurt her. "I suggest we all prepare ourselves for a fight-"

"I'm all for a good fight, mate, but I'd rather hide and live another day. Lunar's going to keep sending teams after us, even if we kill this lot," Bunny adds.

"Who are they?" North asks.

"Four teenagers, elementals. Frost, DunBroch, Corona, Haddock." Pitch lists off their names. "We have to send Lunar a message. He can't mess with our lives anymore."

"But Pitch! They're children! We can't just kill them all," Tooth protests. "I agree with Bunny; we should just go somewhere else. Maybe to Punjam Hy Loo."

Pitch sighs dramatically. "Hide? Us? We're rather conspicuous, in case you haven't realized. And I'm rather fond of murdering innocent children. In their sleep," he adds sarcastically.

"Let's not make that reality," Bunny says.

Sandy yawns widely and tugs Pitch's sleeve.

"What is it, Sandy?" Pitch asks.

_Pitch, many years ago, playing with a young Toothiana._

_A conference table._

"Sandy, always the diplomat. Though I doubt they'll be inclined to talk it out with us. Especially me." Pitch wrings saltwater out of his clothes onto the wood floors, and North shoots a glare in his direction.

"Why especially you?" Tooth flutters up to the rafters again, wide eyes staring down on Pitch.

"No reason you should worry about, Butterfly..."

* * *

"Just in, the Golden Gate Bridge blew up half an hour ago. This latest act of terrorism is attributed to the Nightmare King. The Nightmare King is a rogue government agent who was subjected to genetic experimentation, and who began terrorizing the nation three years ago.

"The TSARS, the Technological and Scientific Advanced Research Society, also a branch of the US Department of Homeland Security, has dispatched a team to kill the Nightmare King. No word as of yet about their progress."

* * *

_Lies! All lies!_

_Not me not me not me_

_It was him._

_Not me, I'm innocent. They're the guilty ones, they who wreck lives as easily as the sun shines. And him, the one who conquers._

_Tell her it wasn't me._

* * *

**_WHO IS THE NIGHTMARE KING?_**

The terrorist who has been systematically destroying major American landmarks calls himself the Nightmare King. Many speculate him to be the youngest general in American history, Kozmotis Pitchiner, who retired twenty-two years ago.

He is known as the Nightmare King and the Boogeyman for his powers over shadow and fear. Eyewitnesses have seen him teleport through shadows and inflict crushing fear upon policemen. Many describe him as "something out of your worst nightmares." And this, for many Americans, is very true. The King has ruined thousands of lives across the country and killed hundreds, as well as cast the nation in shadow.

Are there no heroes to save us from this new terror? Where are the Guardians?

Is it possible that this Nightmare King is the fifth Guardian, Pitch Black?

* * *

_Tell her it's not me._

* * *

_**WHERE ARE THE GUARDIANS?**_

Twenty years ago, a mystery group of five people appeared on the world scene as both scientific advancements and impromptu vigilantes. The leader of the group was a man named Pitch Black, an atrakinetic who looked very much like shadow himself. Atrakinesis is the manipulation of shadow and darkness. Black could also influence thought and create fear. His location is as of now unknown.

Black's second-in-command, known as the Sandman, sends people to sleep, reads minds, and communicates through images, not words. He is unusually short, and his skin is hued gold.

Nicholas North, the oldest Guardian at almost fifty, is a technopath, capable of creating nearly anything out of metal. The second youngest, Aster, has been clocked in at more than ten times the speed of sound, and around him, plants grow in the blink of an eye.

The youngest Guardian, a woman called Tooth, has a set of pink wings sprouting from her back and is covered in small teal feathers. She continually reminds people to floss, and that dental hygiene is very important.

The mysterious Guardians have been missing in action for several weeks now, and the terrorist attacks from the Nightmare King are increasing in response. One can only hope they return soon, before the Nightmare King attacks again.

* * *

_Tell her._

* * *

**Author's Note**: So sorry this is a day late :( I was unable to post it yesterday since I spent the entire time in the car! Wohoo! Infinite thanks to my beta laisai. And again, disclaimers apply. Also, I'm not kidding when I say please review! Love them reviews.

Chapter Soundtrack: Let it Be (feat. Veela), Blackmill


	5. Flight Check

Flight Check

06:30, 25 January 2034

"So, Jack... what's this I've heard about you and your team leaving the Cathedral?" Astrid asks him over breakfast.

"What? Astrid, how did you even find that out?" Jack shoves half a pancake, dripping with maple syrup, in his mouth and says, still chewing, "I thought that was classified."

She wrinkles her nose. "Don't be disgusting, swallow first. Anyway, a little bird told me."

"A little bird named Hiccup? You can weasel anything out of him." Just to annoy her, he eats the second half in one bite too.

"Of course not." But she leaves soon after for the Betas' table.

Hiccup turns an interesting shade of red. "She didn't find out from me, I swear."

"The tone of your voice says otherwise," Merida says without looking up from her scrambled eggs and bacon.

"Stunning observation, Mer. You're a regular Sherlock Holmes," Jack tells her sarcastically.

"When are we leaving?" Rapunzel asks. "Super important mission and all... and we're eating breakfast like nothing's happening?"

Jack looks around at the cafeteria, then says, "Yep, pretty much."

"Alpha Team, please report to upper holding dock immediately."

Rapunzel says, "Pretty much not," just as Hiccup asks, "We have an upper holding dock?"

"Well, what're you waiting for?" Merida's already halfway to the door. "Come on, aren't you excited?"

Toothless looks up from Merida's plate and tilts his head at her, emerald eyes wide. "Hrr?"

"Oh, give that back!" She snatches her bacon from the dragon and whacks his nose, giving him a stony glare. The dragon makes a sad _hroo_, ears drooping.

* * *

"Okay, who read the files?" Jack asks when they're all in the elevator. "'Cause I definitely did not."

Rapunzel's hand shoots into the air. "I did!"

"Fab," Merida says drily. "Got a summary?"

The blonde nods and recites, "**01** Pitchiner, Kozmotis. Atrakinetic, manipulates shadow, darkness, and fear. Mentally unstable. Has an alter ego named Pitch Black, also called the Nightmare King. **02** Mansnoozie, Sanderson. Psychic, can send people to sleep with a touch. Communicates through pictures."

The elevator doors ding open at floor three, and they start looking around for the mysterious upper holding dock. Jack doesn't see any signs pointing to it, so he starts down a hall at random.

"**03** Bunnymund, E. Aster. Chlorokinetic, can control plants. Also displays enhanced speed, capable of running several times the speed of sound. **04** St. North, Nicholas. Technopathic, capable of creating nearly anything out of metal. **05**, Punjam, Toothiana. Winged. Recreates memories with baby teeth," she finishes. "All display finely-tuned reflexes and fighting ability, as we all know..."

"Way to sound like a textbook, Rapunzel." Jack frowns, looking around. "Hey, have we been here before?"

Hiccup does the same 360 scan of the silver hallway. "I don't know. They all look the same. Hey, bud," he says, scratching behind the dragon's ear, "We been here before?"

The dragon _hrrs_ in annoyance, as if to say, _Clearly_.

Rapunzel sighs and leads them down the hall to the right instead of to the left. "There was a sign!"

The other three look at each other and shrug. They didn't see any sign.

Mr. Lunar is waiting for them in a wing of the third floor that's too big to really be in the third floor. It's more of a hangar, really...

"This is outside the dome," Hiccup says unnecessarily.

"If you'll all step this way. I'm sure you all remember your fighter jet simulation lessons from Tactics class..." Mr. Lunar leads them to the right hangar, where Jack finds a sleek silver... Jack isn't sure what it is. A jet? Anyway, the thing takes up half the hangar. He's sure if he steps inside, he'll recognize the white and grey color scheme and the complex-at-first-glance controls from the simulations.

"This is the F-302, but the engineers have taken to calling it the Cirein."

"W-wait," Jack sputters. "You're just shoving us all on a jet-submarine thingy and calling it a day? We're going after a terrorist, not a kitten. He might kill us."

Mr. Lunar nods, then says, "Well, you'll just have to be extra careful, won't you? You've been training for this for years. And in Jack's case..." Lunar offers them a sharp smile.

"What about Rapunzel? We've known her for what, a day? We are not an effective team." Jack accidentally makes it start snowing in the hangar. "What kind of director are you?"

Lunar just sighs and says, "You will get on that plane. You will kill the Guardians. You will obey. _Ky chara-akiva ea, Lunanoviel disru-sinar, andata-ani talene_."

_serveprotectobey_

"I..." Jack stutters. "Oh. Alright."

* * *

"Remind me again why I'm such a pushover," Jack mutters. By unanimous vote, they let him be pilot. Hiccup can't fly anything other than dragons, Merida has no concept of "slower," and Rapunzel can't fly at all.

"I dunno," Hiccup says. "Could you not with the loops?" He clings protectively to Toothless. The dragon has a look of terror printed on his face, half-covering his eyes with his wings; he prefers to fly by his own rules.

The others are with Toothless on this, as Jack likes nothing more than loop-de-loops. "Where's your sense of fun, Hic?" he asks innocently, sending the plane/sub into a spiral upward.

Merida just looks thoughtful, though. "Jack, why didn't you want to go?"

"Did you not hear my tirade or something?" He levels out on an underwater plain, dotted with stone outcroppings. Off in the distance is the city San Francisco, but they're going north, not east.

"But Jack, Mr. Lunar said we should do it." Merida's voice sounds strangely flat to his ears, with none of her usual fire.

Jack shrugs the creepy feeling off. "Since when did that mean you did whatever he said? Is he your dad or something?"

"Jack, we should always do what he says," Rapunzel interjects. Hic and Mer seem to agree with her. "_Ky Lunanoviel andat-ani talene_."

_serveprotectobey_

"You are right. We should do what he says."

* * *

"How are we going to even do this? The shadow guy sounds creepy. And the dream guy? Forget about it. We're just... elementals."

"Jack, we've got a dragon." Hiccup ruffles Toothless's scales affectionately. "And whatever weapons this jet thingy has."

Rapunzel opens a side panel in the ship like she knows exactly what she's doing.

Just for a second, Jack takes his eyes off the deep ocean in front of him. "Those look like phaser guns," he says.

Because she clearly does know what she's doing, Rapunzel picks up a gun and flips it in her hands. "Not a frying pan, but it'll do. It focuses your powers into a beam... sort of. I'd demonstrate, but we're in a ship."

"How do you know so much about this, anyway? I thought you were new." Jack swerves around a particularly large outcropping of rock he didn't notice coming up.

"I wasn't born yesterday," she responds, handing out the phaser-things. He refuses one, since he's got the staff. Besides, guns?

Well, this is an assasination...

"The North Pole, right?" Rapunzel asks when they leave the cover of the Pacific Ocean.

"Yeah." Jack punches in the coordinates she rattles off. They were probably in the files he didn't read. "We sure about this?"

Rapunzel doesn't say anything, but somehow that makes him feel better about it. (_Ky Lunanoviel andat-ani talene_). Her long, blonde hair spills over the back of his chair and basically gets in everything.

It smells kind of like flowers and kind of like rain, not that he notices those kinds of things.

* * *

**Author's Note**: Hey guys, it's yours truly. Sorry this is again late, I sort of forgot about writing this week. Already had a test and an essay in school! Fun times. As a result, this is un-beta-edited. It will be updated as soon as my betas come back. Edit: Wrinkles ironed out :D thank you to laisai and nightfuries!

Please, please review! Thanks.

Oh, and also, here are the translations of the mystery language: _Lunar_: This is what I, Tsar Lunanoff XII, order you to do. _Rapunzel_: Tsar Lunanoff orders you to do this.

Chapter Soundtrack: Kashmir, Led Zeppelin


	6. Party Time

**Party Time**

15:00, 25 January, 2034

"North, it's not a party. No, put the gingerbread cookies away!" Pitch growls and mutters about over-enthusiastic old men.

Tooth buzzes with excitement overhead. "Oh, I can't wait to meet them!"

"I can't believe this..." Pitch sighs dramatically. "Remind me again why people take us seriously."

Bunny retorts, "Because we do all the hard work."

* * *

"Is that... a giant red workshop?" Hiccup asks, squinting against the light reflecting off the snow. The _Cirein_ lands behind an outcropping of ice a few hundred meters from the workshop.

Jack wasn't sure what he was expecting when he saw the Guardians' lair, but this was definitely not it. From what he'd heard about the Nightmare King over the radio and on the TV, he'd thought it was some kind of Batcave.

* * *

"It's freezing!" Rapunzel complains. She's practically up to her knees in snow and the North Wind is blowing her hair in her face. Finally, she blocks the wind and sends it around them, so they're in a bubble of still air. "Hah."

Jack doesn't mind the cold at all. In fact, he prefers the nearly ten degree Fahrenheit weather to the Cathedral's balmy seventy-five.

"Ready, bud?" Hiccup scratches Toothless behind the dragon's floppy ears affectionately.

* * *

Okay, so maybe this isn't Jack's most excellent plan...

The workshop is half-embedded in the side of an icy cliff. Its edges shimmer like it's deciding if it wants to be here or not, and Jack has to squint to see it properly.

"Jack, did you give this plan any thought, or did you just pull it out of your ass?" Merida snaps angrily. She hates the cold just as much as he loves it.

He gives her a sidelong look. "You wanna know the truth?"

"...Probably not. So, we're just waltzing on into the lair of the world's most feared terrorist and his superpowered spy friends? Just in case I misheard you earlier," she says sarcastically.

Jack nudges her shoulder. "Shut up. It sounded better in my head. And we're not waltzing, we're doing the salsa."

"Fine. Then someone start the music..."

* * *

The Nightmare King could hardly have seemed less surprised. And his friends bore similar expressions of... were they waiting for Alpha Team to show?

Jack whirls his staff around and brings a snowstorm in through the doors and windows, shattering the glass. The fairy girl, Toothiana, squeaks and hides behind Pitch, out of the way of the storm-force gales.

The Guardian who chooses to face him is the Sandman, and Jack is always on his toes trying to escape. The short man wields whips made out of... sand? Weird. All Jack knows is that if the gold-tinted man touches him, he'll fall asleep.

Merida fires arrows after Pitch, setting parts of the workshop aflame by accident. At least there are fewer shadows for Pitch to hide in.

North seems more interested in looking at Toothless than fighting Hiccup, staring curiously at the animated stone dragon while simultaneously fending off the Alpha. Jack notices that the Guardian who's really fast, Bunny, poses more of a problem to Hiccup. His powers mirror Hiccup's almost perfectly. That kind of worries Jack, but-he shoots a blast of ice at the Sandman and glues a whip to the ground just before it curls around his ankle-he doesn't have any time to worry.

Rapunzel follows the fairy girl into the air, blowing the other girl back out of scimitar range. She levels her laser gun at the fairy girl, firing bolt after bolt that Tooth has to dodge. A few singe the tips of her dragonfly wings and the edges of her feathers.

Jack yelps when a whip grabs his wrist and slams him into the ground hard. He brings in more snow cover, trying to disappear into the storm. The Sandman glows faintly through the blizzard.

He hears the fairy girl scream over the roar of the storm, and Pitch, who's just a few feet away from him, sends a huge wave of shadow at Rapunzel.  
_JACK, YOU COULDN'T SAVE HER_ hits him like a punch. _YOU'RE USELESS. YOU'LL NEVER HAVE ANY FRIENDS. YOU'RE ALL ALONE, LITTLE JACK'S ALL ALONE. AWW, BABY GONNA CRY? YOU GONNA CRY? PATHETIC. JUST DIE ALREADY!_ He covers his ears like that could block the voice out, eyes squished shut.

"Jack, look out!" Merida yells just as the Sandman touches his wrist.

* * *

_sleep tight, jack. what lovely little nightmares you'll make, you've never had a good dream in your life._

* * *

Toothiana screams, and that's when Pitch loses it. The blonde girl falls out of the sky, curled into a little ball. She's scared, that one. Scared of not being good enough, of being discovered, of failing. Unusual.

He hits the snowy boy by accident, and his fears are decidedly different. Deep-seated fears of losing someone (everyone?) and being alone. Fears of heat and of silence and of suffering, tinged with sorrow. Too close to home, though the nightmares would be exquisite.

Pitch lets the snowy boy go and turns to the fiery girl instead. She's not scared of anything, or so she thinks, but under that façade he can taste fear of disappointment and of being stuck. Locked in one way of being. Fear of being trapped. He can play on those.

The room grows darker, more enclosed. His shadows loom on the walls.

"If we could all quiet down a moment," Pitch drawls. "I think we all have something to say to one another, don't we?"

The fiery girl screams once when the storm dies down. "Jack? Jack, wake up!"

Sandy shrugs helplessly and tries waving the little gold snowflakes dancing above the boy's head away.

The girl with the ridiculously long blonde hair sends mini-tornadoes at Pitch, oblivious to her friend asleep in the snow. Pitch opens a shadow gate and sends the tornadoes away to the Indian Ocean. "Are you quite finished?"

"This is incredible!" North enthuses. Old coot probably didn't even notice the fight, Pitch broods. "How did you animate the obsidian, eh?" North asks the earth boy.

"Um," the boy replies nervously. Aster has him pinned with a cold glare.

"North!" Pitch snaps. "Another time, perhaps."

* * *

Jack dreams about dancing golden snowflakes and warm sands. But someone's shaking him hard and he doesn't want to wake up... "Wh... Rapunzel?" he sits up and almost smacks into her. Her face is right next to his, blonde hair splayed over the snowy floor like honey. "What?"

"Move another inch and I'll..." Pitch glares at Merida, and the brave, bright girl flinches away from his stare. Then he turns the same look on Rapunzel. "You hurt Toothiana," he accuses. "Oh, North, I believe you had something to say? I suggest you spit it out before I lose my patience."

"Ah, yes. Hello! Welcome to Workshop! Pitch, please stop terrorizing this lovely young girl. Is very rude." The man who reminds Jack of Santa Claus smiles at them all warmly. "Leave us alone. Please and thank you. Now leave."

"No!" Rapunzel shouts. "I-We can't leave. We have a mission."

Pitch says, "We've beaten you, Alpha Team. We are giving you a chance to leave, despite my ideas otherwise."

She shakes her head slowly. "No... I..."

"Why are you doing this, blonde girl? You are not like the other three." Pitch strides over to her, thinking. "Why are you afraid of being discovered?"

"What? I'm not-" she protests.

"You're the Nightmare King. Why should we listen to a word you say?" Jack demands. "You've murdered thousands of people! You destroyed the Golden Gate Bridge and the Washington Monument and the-"

Pitch's calm demeanor breaks and he yells, "Don't you go blaming me for something I didn't do!"

"...Pretty sure you're the Nightmare King," Hiccup interjects. Toothless bares his diamond teeth at the terrorist just in case the shadow man gets any ideas. "Haven't seen any others of you running around."

"Lunar," Pitch hisses, and the word sounds like a swear. "I told him, it wasn't me! I am not the Nightmare King."

"Then who the hell are you?" Jack snaps, patience at its rope's end.

The Nightmare King glares at Jack. "Pitchiner. Kozmotis Pitchiner. Doesn't that useless moon-faced fool tell you anything?"

* * *

**Author's Note**: Late again, so sorry! Thanks to my beta laisai for kicking me into writing this chapter. Thanks to nightfuries for more edits, coming soon :D

Disclaimers apply still. Review please! I love feedback of all sorts but not flaming because that's not cool on so many levels.

***Edited 21/10/13

Chapter Soundtrack: Monster, Imagine Dragons (Pitch Black's song)


	7. Two Sides to Every Argument

**Two Sides to Every Argument**

20:00, 25 January 2034

Rapunzel squeaks in protest. "Don't listen to him, he's obviously skewing the truth! A-and of course I'd be scared of being discovered, we're sneaking into-"

"No, no, no. That's illogical. You've been discovered by us... but you're still scared," Pitch accuses her. A slightly gleeful smile twists his features, and even the other Guardians seem a little put off. Jack is most definitely put off by that facsimile of joy.

"What? It can't be my fear you're feeling because I'm not scared!" she yells at the end.

That warped smile turns into an equally corrupt laugh. "Team Alpha, I'm curious. What do you really feel about Rapunzel? You met her yesterday, was it?"

Jack opens his mouth, pauses for a moment as if listening to something, and then closes it again.

_serveprotectobey_

Pitch laughs again.

* * *

He doesn't think anything's funny. He's laughing and he can't stop, why is he laughing?

Seraphina's pink wings flutter in the corner of his vision, and she darts in front of him. "Stop it!" she yells.

For a horrible moment he just keeps laughing, and then he does stop, finally, but his lips still smile and words that are not his tumble out. "What did you say? You said something to him. Was it..." he pretends to think for a moment.

"Don't say it!" the blonde girl orders frantically.

"Say what?" the snowy boy demands. "What did you say?".

The Nightmare King says, "_Ky Lunanoviel andat-ani talene_," even though he doesn't know what the words mean at all.

"It doesn't matter what she said," the snowy boy says in blatant contradiction of his previous statement. "We trust Rapunzel." His voice sounds flatter than it was before, and Pitch latches onto this piece of information.

"Didn't you hear me say that?"

* * *

Jack shrugs. "Say what?" He thinks it must've been important, but he just can't remember what it was.

Rapunzel waves her hands and shouts emphatically, "Absolutely nothing!"

"Something like Pavlovian conditioning, if I've got my terms right," the Nightmare King comments, still smiling and largely ignoring Rapunzel's every word.

"Stop! You don't know what you're doing!"

"Jack... that is your name, right? Yes. Jack, should you really be here? I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, you don't want to be here."

"What? Mr. Lunar told me to be here," Jack says as though it should be obvious.

"Oy, can we speed this up a bit?" Bunny whines. "You're taking forever!" Tooth elbows him and he shuts up again.

Then Pitch interrupts. "He's trying to say that you should not trust her after just a day, and that you're stupid for doing so. Or being forced to subconsciously. One of Lunar's favorite tricks."

"...why are you talking about yourself in the third person?" Jack asks. Rapunzel actually flinches.

"Because-"

Rapunzel uses the wind to blow the snow back into the air, cutting Pitch off mid-sentence. The wind twists into a tornado, far larger than the one she made back in the Cathedral, and it shakes the very foundations of the workshop.

* * *

Pitch's first and only thought is to grab Tooth, since she might get blown away in the storm. He grabs her as she flies by and shelters her from the worst of the wind. She clings to him, purple eyes wide, until suddenly, the storm dies.

Sandy points to a sleeping Rapunzel proudly. Little golden chameleons dance around her head.

He lets Tooth flutter back up to drift around the rafters, and she does a couple loop-de-loops just because she can. Then he finishes his sentence. "... and I think I've said this a thousand times. I am not the Nightmare King."

"Well, that makes no sense, since-" Jack starts to say.

"You wouldn't have any questions if you stopped interrupting!" Pitch snaps. "As I was saying... fear is a very... strange thing. Intoxicating, if you will."

"And-"

Pitch glares daggers, and Jack instantly shuts his mouth. "I get carried away."

The snow boy laughs cynically. "That's one word for it. How about homicidal? Or insane? I think you're just trying to save your skin."

"And I think you're just following your conditioned orders. Sit down, snow boy, and listen for once in your life. Lunar is scared. He's a scared little man who hides behind children."

"Oh boy, here we go again," Bunny comments, and this time it's North who shushes him hurriedly.

Pitch continues undeterred, "So you must ask yourselves, why is he so desperate to kill not me but the rest of us as well." He glances at Tooth without meaning to.

Bunny impatiently adds, "Because Lunar's terrified we're all going to go barmy and start killing people like this one."

"I do wish you'd learn to shut up," Pitch mutters.

Jack looks to the other Guardians, confused. "Wait, that's true? I thought it was just because you were allies with the Nightmare King."

"Allies? With that wacko?" Bunny scoffs. "Nah."

"Why do you hate Rapunzel? She's sort of hard to hate..."

"Isn't it obvious?" Pitch stares in astonishment at Jack. "She's working for him! Honestly, kids these days..."

* * *

**Author's Note**: Hey there, guys. Super sorry for the short and terrible (terribly short) chapter, but I'm kinda burnt out on this 'verse at the moment. Also, no time today at ALL to write. And both my betas are missing in action, so this is UNBETA'D. (Unbetaed? Un-beta-edited? Unbetad?). All errors are mine alone.

I realize you might be put off by Pitch's characterization. So I hope this chapter helped... More random things... Pitch is about 45, North is maybe fifty, Sandy is fortyish, Bunny is thirty, and Tooth is, like, twenty. Alpha Team is anywhere from sixteen to eighteen, but the other teams are more like fifteen. The Cathedral is the dome. I thought that was pretty obvious, but one of my betas kind of raised a flag about the confusion over underwater cathedrals. If you ship Jackunzel, keep watch in the next, I dunno, two chapters. I put this here since no one reads the author's notes at all. So I'm home safe :D

Disclaimers apply per usual.

_**Review, please!**_ I'm _this close_ *holds fingers a centimeter apart* to making this a review powered fic. _This close_. And come on, eight hundred of you and less than ten people reviewed?

FloraIrmaTylee, Little Miss Thalia Grace, someone136, and the guests who reviewed, you guys rock. Thanks so much! Also thanks for the faves and the follows!

Chapter Soundtrack: Pinesong, A Fine Frenzy


	8. Far, Far Away

**Far, Far Away**

20:15, 25 January 2034

"It's painfully obvious to anyone on the outside." Pitch sighs in exasperation.

"Y-yeah, well, why should we trust you? Maybe you're just trying to turn us against each other," Hiccup retorts. Toothless growls in Pitch's direction, ears pressed flat against his head.

Pitch shrugs. "Why should you trust her?"

Rapunzel yawns widely, the gold chameleons around her head dissipating. Jack isn't sure what he thinks about her anymore, but he at least wishes she was trustworthy.

The young fairy woman tilts her head at them all curiously. She reminds Jack of a sugar-high hummingbird, in constant motion. "Maybe she's contingency."

"What?" Jack and Rapunzel demand at the same time.

Tooth flits down from her rafters and hovers at around eye level. "Well, I was just thinking, since you're the new program and all... maybe they want to make sure you don't malfunction," she says tentatively.

"Well, excuse you," Pitch mutters.

Rapunzel shoots an angry glare at Tooth, fidgeting with her hair, but doesn't say a word.

"Malfunction?" Jack can see cold water closing in above his head. "You mean, go crazy and kill people? Because I haven't been feeling any homicidal tendencies recently... what about you, guys?"

"Excuse you too," Pitch grumbles. "And yes, that's just what she said. You've got ears, so listen."

The fairy woman reaches out one small, green feathered hand to Rapunzel, and the other girl jerks back. "Don't touch me! I know what you can do," she accuses.

Tooth draws back as if stung, and a protective look flashes over Pitch's face.

"Rapunzel..." Jack doesn't know what he's feeling anymore, and definitely doesn't know what to say. "Care to explain yourself? Was it because you 'had no other choice?' " He could actually kick himself for using air quotes. It was a bad habit.

"You know nothing, Jack Frost," she says coldly. "Nothing. I... you really don't know anything."

"You had no other choice?" he asks skeptically. "Wow, shoulda seen that coming."

Bunny mouths the word 'burn,' and gets another elbow from North.

"Stop it! Stop talking!" she yells.

Pitch shrugs again and tosses Alpha Team out of the workshop, still bickering amongst themselves.

North, Sandy, and Bunny share one look and burst out laughing.

"Aw, I haven't seen anything so funny since that ninja guy tried to kill us six months ago!" Bunny wipes tears away from his eyes. "Lunar must be fucking desperate."

"Language, Bunny," North chides, trying to compose himself.

"There, are you satisfied now?" Pitch sulks in a particularly dark corner of the main room. "No death. Barely. I almost lost it in there."

North claps Pitch on the shoulder. "Excellent, my friend. I am not thinking we will be seeing them anymore."

"Please, North, it's been thirty-nine years since you learned English fluently. Stop using the progressive tense for everything," Pitch criticizes, still in full-on mope mode.

"I am thinking no," North jokes.

* * *

Merida glowers at Rapunzel. "I trusted you," she mutters.

"We all did," Hiccup adds. "Because of that... phrase."

"No, it wasn't! I..." Rapunzel looks on the verge of tears. "I swear, I never used it on you before we got on the Cirein."

"Let's just go ask Lunar, then," Jack says.

Rapunzel's eyes grow wide. "No! You can't! He'd..."

"What? Afraid he'll say you were working with him?" he accuses. Jack makes a careless gesture with his staff, and snow starts blowing in again from the north. "Okay, you can stay here."

"D-don't say I didn't warn you," she whispers after a moment.

Jack rolls his eyes. "Or you could just say why you're with him. Is it really that hard?"

"You wouldn't believe me. You trust those... them more than m-me." She really does start to cry, and Jack bites his lip.

"Try me."

She doesn't say anything until they're back in the Cirein. "You don't remember much, do you?"

"About?" Jack fires up the engines, listens to them hum softly.

"Your life before, obviously. Everything starts when you were fifteen, right?" Rapunzel asks, green eyes wide. "Before that, nothing?"

"Well... yes," he says after a moment. "But that was on purpose."

"Yeah." She sniffles. "Your memories were wiped."

Hiccup rolls his eyes. "Are you trying to say that we knew each other before, and that's why we trust you?" By his side, Toothless makes a dragony kind of snort that ends with a bit of fire.

"I said you wouldn't believe."

"Why do you remember?" Merida asks. "Why not us?"

Rapunzel shrugs and answers, "It didn't work with me. The memory wipe. It worked on you, though."

"Wait, that's ridiculous. Why would someone wipe our memories anyway?" Jack takes his eyes off the sky for a moment to look back at her, and then has to jerk the plane out of the way of some geese.

"Because then we'd have no ties. Nothing to pull us back home. Not that we had a home..." she sighs softly.

Jack's kind of confused now. "Wait, start from the beginning. Like, the very beginning."

Rapunzel takes a deep breath, twisting a long strand of her hair in her fingers. Then she says, "We met, a-and I realize this sounds far fetched, in an orphanage in Pennsylvania. Back then, we were the best of friends... No one came to adopt us, though. Jack was too rowdy, and Hiccup never came down for visits, and Merida scared everyone away because she didn't like any of the families that came... and I couldn't leave you. But we did catch someone's eye despite-"

"Lunar," Jack interrupts. "It was Lunar."

She laughs, but there's no humor in her voice. "Yes. It was more than any of us could have hoped for... we'd get to stay together. And what child doesn't want to grow up to be a superhero?"

* * *

**Author's Note**: You'd better thank your lucky stars that FloraIrmaTylee and ShadowsOfTheSupernatural were awesome and reviewed. You're off the hook...

Unbeta-edited again, which is somewhat alarming. Where have my betas gone? All errors are, as a result, mine alone. Message me if you find any, because I really don't think they'll be coming back anytime soon.

Aaaand disclaimers! Wohoo. None of these people belong to me.

Also, please review :3 Although the physical appearance of the please may not matter to you, be assured that this please is very beautiful indeed.

**Please go vote in my poll for my new ROTG fic. You get to decide what ship I end up writing in, but you do have to vote! Otherwise there will be _no_ ships, and we don't want that. So gogogo!**

Chapter Soundtrack: Show Me What I'm Looking For, Carolina Liar; Bonus Soundtrack for Rapunzel: Down Along the Dixie Line, Gillian Welch


	9. Turn Back the Pendulum, Part One

**Turn Back the Pendulum, Part One**

09:00, 15 December 2028

Jack was all for saying yes. Merida and Hiccup agreed. Wasn't this the lucky break they'd been waiting for? They could all stay together-and get cool elemental powers. It was like a dream come true.

Rapunzel was all for saying no. It was like a dream come true. Wasn't there a saying, there's no such thing as a free lunch? It was a saying for a reason.

Jack retaliated with don't look a gift horse in the mouth, to which Rapunzel responded by telling him the story of the Trojan Horse. "Come on, Jack, Hic, Mer... doesn't this sound at least a bit... fishy to you?"

"Would you rather get split apart? Never see each other again?" Jack demands. "Because that's what's waiting for us."

"B-but come on, Jack! It doesn't even make sense. Why us? Why now? Why?" Rapunzel looks at them all for answers. "I don't want to lose you, but..."

Merida punches Rapunzel in the arm. "Don't worry. You always worry."

"Yeah. I get that it's sort of scary, but it's fun too!" Jack grins a bit. "It'll be the coolest thing ever...Three guesses which element Merida gets!"

"Water," Hiccup quips drily.

"Really suits your personality," Rapunzel chimes in, trying to sound upbeat.

* * *

It took less time than she thought it would. Somehow, she'd expected something more... showy. Life-changing. Maybe some glowing lights or funny electronic sounds or even sparks. In reality, it was a cold white room and a needle. It wasn't even a needle full of something blue that bubbled or something electric green.

One injection of clear liquid and done.

She shot a glance at Jack just before the needle touched her skin, and he gave her a thumbs-up.

Then they waited for something to change. The number of times Jack tried to firebend without success made them all laugh.

Eventually they were let out of the laboratory and into a mess hall, which served absolutely nothing appetizing. Jack and Hiccup gravitated towards the hot chocolate machine none too subtly, and Merida ran straight to the bacon. Rapunzel didn't want anything at all.

"Gross!" Jack spat out the chocolate. "It's awful."

"It's fine," Hiccup sighed. "You're just being dramatic. It's just kind of hot."

He nodded vigorously. "I know, it's super hot. That's gross. It would be so much better cold."

"No way, that's awful!" Hiccup laughed.

Jack rubbed at his eyes. "You are so wrong," he said, "Everything's better cold."

"I thought you liked warm things..." Hiccup trailed off, then shrugged. "Hey, what happened to your eyes?"

"My what?" Jack asked.

"His what?" Rapunzel echoed, running up to Jack so she could get a better look. "Oh, they're so pretty!"

Jack's eyes widened a bit. "What do you mean...? They're brown."

"Blue," Merida corrected as she munched on some bacon. "That's so cool! I hope my eyes change color."

Rapunzel twirled a piece of her brown hair between her fingers. "Jack, your hair's white."

"That is so not cool!" Jack exclaimed, dropping the cup of hot chocolate and turning around to stare at his reflection in the glass. "What the hell, I look like an old man!" He tugged at a few strands of hair and glared at the white roots. The new color spread down as they watched until everything had changed color. "That's ridiculous," Jack muttered.

"Now try firebending," Hiccup suggested with all sincerity.

Merida demanded, "Are my eyes changing color?"

"No, Mer, they're still green," Jack said apologetically. "Hey, Rapunzel!"

"Y-yeah?" Rapunzel froze on the spot, feeling her scalp itch. "What?"

They all stared at her in a mix of shock and amazement, and she felt something start tickling the backs of her legs. Rapunzel jumped about a foot in the air and whirled around like a dog chasing its tail.

"Whatwasthat?!" she shrieked, much to everyone else's amusement. Something long and golden flowed behind her, and it shimmered. Her ankles tangled around the weird, thin strands of stuff, and she toppled over, flailing.

Jack could barely breathe, he was laughing so hard. "It's your hair," he gasped between laughs. "...Hair..."

"Looks like you lived up to your namesake," Hiccup joked. "Congratulations."

Merida helped her untangle herself from her new extremely long, golden hair. "That was definitely a sight to see."

"Wish I had a camera," Jack sighed, still grinning like an idiot. Rapunzel really hated him sometimes. Especially that annoying little smile...

She grumbled and grabbed a knife from a nearby table, sawing off the ends of a strand of hair. To her bemusement, the hair reverted back to its usual brown. "Is it supposed to do that?" she asked her friends.

They shrugged. "I don't think you should cut it anymore," Jack said hesitantly. "Just in case, you know?"

"But it's so annoying!" Ten seconds and she couldn't even stand it all.

Merida lit up. "I can braid it for you!" Without prompting, the redhead began turning Rapunzel's hair into a significantly shorter braid.

"I look ridiculous," Rapunzel muttered when Merida finished. The braid was nearly as long as she was! Although she had to hand it to Merida, it didn't look too awful.

"It's kind of pretty," Jack said to her surprise.

Hiccup rolled his eyes. "You just like it 'cause it's shiny."

* * *

Rapunzel had to hand it to Jack. He'd made a good decision.

After the hair fiasco (and the eye fiasco), they'd been subjected to a bunch of tests and then handed off to a training team. That was when the awesome stuff started. Jack took a particular delight in making it snow nearly every single day. Merida toasted her own toast just to show off.

Hiccup found he could make stone animals move. It started out with boring things, according to Jack, dogs and cats and goldfish.

"Goldfish aren't cool," he complained. "You know what's cool? A basilisk. Or a dragon."

Hiccup took this advice to heart and crafted a dragon out of obsidian. The project took him weeks, and he was ridiculously proud when he'd finished.

"Hiccup..." Rapunzel tried not to laugh. "He doesn't have any teeth."

With horrified eyes, Hiccup stared at his masterpiece. "Oh no..."

Jack instantly dubbed the dragon Toothless, and the name stuck, much to Hiccup's disappointment.

And for a while, everything was just fine.

* * *

"It wasn't me, I swear!" Jack protested.

"It wasn't us either," Merida chimed in. "None of us did that!"

Rapunzel muttered to herself quietly.

They surveyed the damage, scorch marks and unearthed floors and huge icicles. No one was convinced.

"It wasn't us," Hiccup insisted to the department head. "We promise."

Unfortunately for their story, there were cameras inside the building that sang a different song. The four watched in terror as they saw themselves systematically destroying the building using their elemental powers.

"Hey, where's Rapunzel?" Jack asked after a minute. "She isn't in the video."

They watched in silence for another minute, and finally they saw gold flash across the screen. Rapunzel closed her eyes and tried to forget the next scene.

"Stop, what are you doing!" on-screen Rapunzel screamed. "Why does no one ever listen to me?"

* * *

**Author's Note**: Aaand cut! Stay tuned for part two of this chapter... I think we know by now that I own none of this.

Again, FloraIrmaTylee, thanks for reviewing! Everyone else should join her and review (please). You'll get my eternal happiness and brownie points :D

**Vote in my poll! You get to decide what ship is in my new ROTG fic! If you don't vote, there will be ****_no_**** ships, and we don't want that. So gogogo! You can find the poll on my profile, along with writing weather updates. **

Chapter Soundtrack: Team, Lorde


	10. Turn Back the Pendulum, Part Two

**Turn Back the Pendulum, Part Two**

07:00, 20 July 2030

"Jack?" Rapunzel asked. "Are you in here?" She peeked into the darkened room, then tiptoed inside. She had to haul in her unbraided hair for a few seconds before she could close the door again.

"Turn on the lights and I will kill you where you stand," Jack mumbled.

She laughed just a bit. "Sorry I wasn't here today, I had to go to Washington. Something about me knowing you better than anyone else. Maybe... maybe TSARS won't wipe your memory. If I was convincing enough."

"I'm sure you were great, 'Punz." Jack was buried underneath a large mound of blankets, and his voice was muffled so she could hardly tell what he was saying.

"Jack, I heard about today," she said tentatively.

He didn't reply.

"I'm very-"

"Don't say you're sorry. It doesn't matter if you're sorry. A sorry can never change anything," he accused. "Just go away."

Hot, prickly tears welled in her eyes. "Jack..."

He shoved the pile of blankets away and sat up to face her. Even in the dim light, she could see his white hair and blue eyes. "I'm scared I might kill someone, 'Punz, the next time."

"That's ridiculous..." she tried to reassure him, sitting down on his bed. "You've never done it before, and you won't in the future."

"But he did," he whispered. "I saw him on the news. And they're all scared that we'll be like him."

Rapunzel twisted her hair between her fingers. "You won't."

"And how do you know? Isn't that why we're always kept under lock and key? Because you're scared? Don't you know we're scared too?"

She threw her arms around Jack and hugged him as tight as she could. "I know. And I'll do everything I can to make you un-scared."

"Here's a thought... don't let them wipe our memories." He pulled away and tugged a piece of her hair affectionately. "That would be really, really, really nice."

"Yeah, I figured. I'm working on it..."

* * *

"Don't do it," she begged. And she hated begging. "I promise, next time, I'll be able to control them. I swear."

"You said that last time, and the time before that... And we can't have another incident like the Guardian program happening again."

Rapunzel wanted to scream. "But it's wrong to just wipe their memories clean like that!"

"There's no other alternative! The only other option is killing, and I would really, really not like to do that," Lunar told her. "Neither would you."

"But..."

"I'll tell you what. You can join their program, once their memories have been wiped and everything's stable again." Lunar looked pretty satisfied with that solution.

Rapunzel folded her arms. "Their program? I thought we all were in Project Praeses together."

"Well, no, not anymore. They're part of Project Moonrise, new and improved."

"I thought you said we were new and improved!" All this program switching made her head spin.

"...We thought you were. We were wrong. You four are just lucky that I didn't scrap your project the way I did with the Guardians." Lunar waved her off.

"And Pascal, and Flynn, and Jamie, and all the others? What about them?" she demanded.

"What about them? They're part of Moonrise too."

"And what about me?"

"You, my dear," Lunar said, "are still part of Praeses. We're very curious about you indeed."

Rapunzel ran. She ran to the cryo center, all the way on the opposite side of the building, where her friends slept. Finally, she stopped in the back of the room, where Jack's cryotube was. Jack's eyes were closed, and his soft white hair floated around his head in a cloud. Little ice crystals rimmed the edges of the cryotube window.

"Jack?" she whispered. "Jack, I'm so sorry. I did what I could... I'm always letting you down. I'll see you soon, though. Promise."

She wanted to break the stupid tube open and shake him awake. She wanted to save him.

Of course, Lunar wouldn't like that at all.

* * *

Rapunzel was surprised by the amount of input she got into the Moonrise Project. She arranged the teams, leaving the fourth Alpha spot conspicuously empty. And she helped decide what should be taught in the Moonrise school.

Then there was the other side of her life. As the only remaining member of Project Praeses and the only one who stayed herself, all the scientists were very interested in her. Very.

Four years.

It took four years for them to decipher what made her different.

Four years of waiting, of watching her friends join Project Moonrise one by one.

Hiccup still had Toothless, and Merida still had her fiery personality.

Jack, though, had magically acquired a shepherd's staff, nearly as tall as he was. It seemed to focus his powers, which had previously been unpredictable. He had less trouble making snowstorms now, and seemed to rely on the staff to do everything. Even freezing Hiccup's face to water fountains.

Over those four years, Rapunzel watched the Guardian program closely. They actually didn't display the dual personalities her friends did... Except for the one that dressed in black, who was called Pitch Black. Appropriate.

It kind of amused her how much time Lunar spent trying to disband the Guardians. They were a very effective team if a bit... Odd. Especially the feathered girl.

Eventually, she realized that she could hack into the TSARS request system. Only people with key codes could access the system, though, and Rapunzel definitely didn't have a code of her own. The codes were also alphanumeric and fifteen characters long, so she didn't stand a chance of guessing someone's.

Rapunzel decided to steal a code instead. Preferably from Lunar... hopefully he wouldn't notice too soon. At least she had a security code, which she used to get into the security systems. Not too unusual, since she used the same system to keep an eye on Alpha Team. Though this time, she glued her eyes to the camera in Lunar's room, which provided a very nice view of his desktop computer.

It took her a few days to decipher the actual code, and then she submitted her request.

* * *

TSARS Request Form

Request: reactivation of CORONA, transfer from PROJECT PRAESES and immediate instatement into ALPHA TEAM, PROJECT MOONRISE.

KEY CODE REQUIRED.

CODE: G0LD3N4G3BJB007

IDENTIFICATION: AUBERON LUNAR

GRANTED. CORONA DESIGNATION CHANGED. NEW DESIGNATION 016CORONA, AIR ELEMENTAL.

TRANSFER INITIATED.

* * *

Matthew the intern came up and poked her shoulder. "Hey, Rapunzel, you got transferred."

"Really?" She feigned surprise. "Where to?"

"Project... Moonrise. Well, I guess it had to happen sometime or another." He shrugged and handed her a bunch of files. "Fill 'em out when you have a chance. Probably won't have to do them since you're getting transferred..."

"Thanks, Matthew." Rapunzel waved goodbye to the intern. Well, at least-

Matthew spun around and called, "Oh, wait! Lunar wants to see you tomorrow at 0700 in his office."

Rapunzel wanted to cry. She knew he'd find out sooner or later, just not that soon. "Okay, thanks..."

Back in her room, Rapunzel found a new uniform waiting on her bed. It was white, grey, and yellow in some patches, and nothing like her Praeses one. Her name, 016CORONA, was stitched in yellow thread where her nameplate was.

She'd meet her friends again, tomorrow. Though they didn't remember her at all...

Lunar's office lay at the end of a long, mirrored hall, at the top of the Moonrise compound. She'd never been inside the compound in her four years of watching the project, just stayed in the admin building on top of the dome. She really wished she'd braided her hair that morning, because it dragged down the halls for several feet behind her.

Lunar's door was already open when she got there. "Ah, Rapunzel. Sit down," Lunar invited. He had nothing but smiles, and that was the most unnerving thing about him. "I see you've transferred yourself to Project Moonrise."

"Yes, I did," she retorted defiantly.

He surprised her by saying, "Good. Saved me the trouble of doing it. Now, Rapunzel... I'm sure you're aware of the situation with the Guardian Program. I'm permitting you to enter the field again to ensure Alpha Team neutralizes the Guardians. Can you do that for me?"

"...Why would I ever do anything for you?" Rapunzel asked.

"Don't you want to see them? Your friends?" Lunar leveled his gaze at her. "You can, if you do exactly as I say." Lunar made a gesture at the door and said out of the blue, "Please, come in. There's someone I'd like you three to meet."

Rapunzel turned around and saw Jack Frost, standing in the doorway, for the first time in four years.

And the rest, as they say, was history...

* * *

**Author's Note**: This chapter is early for the first time in MONTHS. I'll have a one-week hiatus (Spanish exchange student, wohoo!), and then a hiatus during November for NaNoWriMo (you might get a chapter anyway since I procrastinate). Sorry :(

Side note, TSARS stands for the Technological and Scientific Advanced Research Society. I wanted it to fit the word TSAR at least somewhat, ok?

Thank you to ember collins and FloraIrmaTylee, you're cool people. All others who came and read and left without leaving comments, thanks. You suck. IF YOU DIDN'T VOTE IN THE POLL, YOU ARE DEAD TO ME.

**SO VOTE IN MY POLL. You get to decide what ship is in my new ROTG fic! If you don't vote, there will be ****_no_**** ships, and we don't want that. So gogogo! You can find the poll on my profile, along with writing weather updates. (You get kudos and my eternal love and also a promo on my tumblr if you leave your URL. I kid you not.)**

Chapter Soundtrack: Dog Days Are Over, Florence + the Machine


	11. Home

**Home**

01:00, 26 January 2034

Silence falls in the Cirein after Rapunzel finishes her story.

"So..." Jack says in an attempt to break the ice. Unfortunately, he hasn't thought much further than "so" and now the silence is dragging again. "R-Rapunzel?"

"Yeah?"

"I want to trust you. Honest. But your story seems really, really..." He looks around for the right word. "Improbable."

She nods understandingly. "And I get that. If I were you... I wouldn't know what to believe either."

Hiccup stares out of the ship's window. "If only we could remember, then we'd know for sure."

"That girl," Merida says suddenly. "The one with the wings. Didn't Rapunzel say something about her...?"

"She can recall memories." Jack almost smiles. "That's kind of perfect."

"In case you'd forgotten, we just kind of tried to-" Hiccup reminds them.

Oh right, that. "Well, they're stronger, so we're kind of not a threat to them," Jack says tentatively. " And I bet she'd help us anyway."

"Jack, it's like one in the morning. Can't we sleep first?" Merida complains, yawning on purpose.

"What? Where? I really don't think we should go back to the Cathedral," Rapunzel says nervously, twisting a stand of hair between her fingers.

"What about Jamie?" Jack demands. "And everyone else...? We can't just leave them there."

"I know, Jack..." Rapunzel sighs softly, mulling over their options. "Okay, fine. We'll go back," she says reluctantly. "If you want to so much."

Jack reaches out and rests his hand on hers lightly. "Thanks, Rapunzel."

"Now put the bloody autopilot on so we can get some bloody sleep," Merida snaps impatiently.

* * *

After just a few hours of sleep, the autopilot beeps, letting them know that they've arrived back at the Cathedral.

"No..." Merida groans, hand flailing around for an off switch.

"Deactivate," Rapunzel mumbles sleepily, and the beeping stops, finally. "Everyone wake up..."

"Why?" Hiccup asks, face half buried in one of Toothless's wings.

Jack yawns and stretches. "Are we there yet?"

"_Obviously_."

Eventually, Jack's awake enough to land the ship, only scraping the paint on the side of the hanger a bit.

"This is a very, very bad idea. Lunar won't like it if... when we tell him that we left the Guardians alive," Rapunzel says worriedly as they creep down the third floor corridors.

"Can we even fit everyone in the ship?" Merida wonders aloud.

"Shhh!" Jack whispers. "And yeah, of course we can fit everyone in. Have you seen the size of that thing?"

Rapunzel asks, "Then where will we go afterwards? To the Guardians?"

"And will everyone even believe Rapunzel's story?" Hiccup adds unhelpfully.

"I... I don't know, okay?" Jack admits. "I haven't thought that far."

Merida snorts, startling them all. "This isn't a movie, Jack."

"I agree," Hiccup chimes in. "It can't possibly work out all nicely for us in the end. That's unrealistic."

They get into the elevator, finally, and by that point Jack wants to yell at them all. "We can't leave Jamie and everyone else here! What else are we supposed to do?" Elevator music plays in the background, the sugary lyrics somewhat ruining the effect of Jack's words.

"Um... We could come back for them later," Rapunzel suggests. The elevator doors ding open on the first floor.

"Oops, wrong one," Hiccup says, face turning pink. He hurriedly presses the right button, and the doors close again.

"What're we going to say to them, Jack?" Rapunzel asks. "What if they don't believe what we say? We don't exactly have any compelling evidence," she points out as the elevator opens again.

Frost crackles across the elevator and spreads into the second floor. "I don't know! Stop asking so many questions."

_Thud._

"What was that?" Hiccup twists around, trying to pinpoint the sound of the noise.

_Thud._

"Where is that even coming from?" Jack wonders aloud. They exit the elevator and look out of the nearest window curiously.

It's raining in the Cathedral.

"Is it... raining in there?" Rapunzel asks tentatively. "Is it even _supposed_ to rain in there?"

_Thud._

"Okay, what is that noise?" Hiccup demands.

Jack squints at the ceiling, noticing black lines spreading across the surface of the carbide dome.

_Thud._

The cracks widen, and more water starts trickling down inside the dome. "Guys, I think the thud is someone trying to break into the dome," he says.

"What?! Who would do that? Don't they know we're down here?" Hiccup opens the window to get a better look.

"I'm going up there," Rapunzel announces, pushing past Hiccup and climbing up on the windowsill. Then she jumps, long hair still spilling out the window her long after she's flown up past the building.

"Wait for me!" Jack yells. "I can probably stop the leaking."

Rapunzel nods and swings back around. She grabs Jack by his arm, then yanks him out of the window.

They stop just under the dome, so close that Jack had considered ducking momentarily. A current of air is all that's keeping them up, like a magic, floating pillow. Not precisely comforting... but then again, neither are the cracks in the ceiling.

Something hits the dome again, and Jack splutters as a wave of cold ocean water hits him in the face. Annoyed, he freezes the water solid with a whack of his staff. That definitely wasn't his best idea, as the frozen water expanded the cracks even further.

Rapunzel laughs nervously, gripping Jack's arm a bit tighter. "Jack, I don't think you should do that again."

"Yeah, agreed." He decides to cover the hole with ice instead, and his efforts leave a whole section of the dome covered in ice and frost.

_Crack._

More water bursts through Jack's patch of ice, dousing both him and Rapunzel in the subsequent deluge.

"Jack, do something!" Rapunzel yells as the ocean starts swamping the bottom of the Cathedral. Some people from the Moonrise Project have gathered below the leak, looking up curiously.

Jack shoves his free hand as far as it'll go into the growing fissure in the dome, trying to freeze the water outside the Cathedral instead of inside. Finally, the thuds stop. He casts one look at Rapunzel and says, "Okay, I think we're good."

"We should get Hiccup up here. He's pretty good at fixing things," Rapunzel replies. She looks down, presumably for the first time. "Jack?!"

"What?" He looks down too, but doesn't see anybody too controversial standing below them.

"That was quite rude of you, Frost. And I'm over here," a familiar voice drawls.

Jack would've jumped, but Rapunzel holds his arm in a death grip. And he can't exactly jump on air.

Standing on the shadowy side of the Cathedral is a tall, dark, and handsome figure, smiling in a patently unfriendly manner. And then he says, "Knew I'd find you here."

* * *

**Author's Note**: Finally back from hiatus! Unfortunately, I might have to go back on hiatus during November, so I can write for NaNoWriMo.

Un-beta-edited! My betas have disappeared! I hope they haven't been attacked by werewolves again. Last time I had to call in the Winchesters _and_ the Ghostfacers. PM me any errors, please.

**VOTE IN MY POLL. You get to decide what ship is in my new ROTG fic! If you don't vote,****_ there will be _**_**no**_**_ ships_****. So gogogo! You can find the poll on my profile. (You'll get kudos, my eternal love, and a promo on my tumblr if you leave your URL in my PM. I kid you not.)**

***I edited chapters 1, 2, and 6 on October 21, 2013. No new stuffies, sorry :(

Chapter Soundtrack: Radioactive Pompeii, by Imagine Dragons vs. Bastille (no, seriously, look it up)


	12. To Kill the King

**To Kill the King**

09:00, 26 January 2034

* * *

Whatever Pitch is doing here, it can't possibly be good. Alarm bells ring in Jack's head like there's no tomorrow. "Why are you-?" he starts to demand.

"Because." Pitch gives Jack and Rapunzel a vicious smile.

"Wait, were you the one who was outside of the dome?" Jack accuses. "You were, weren't you? Why did you do that?"

Pitch laughs, a chilling sound that makes Jack unconsciously push Rapunzel behind him. "It's what I do, Frost," he says. "I was hoping to kill all of you. I suppose it can wait a moment."

"I thought you were against killing," Jack responds tentatively.

"On the contrary. It's my only hobby." Pitch smiles in a way that shows all his teeth and doesn't convey an ounce of mirth.

"You really need to branch out, Pitch," Jack says without thinking. "Um, I mean, K-"

"Wrong!" Pitch laughs again. "You're adorable."

Rapunzel seems to think faster than Jack does, and by the time he arrives at the conclusion that this is the Nightmare King and they should be far, far away from him, they're halfway to the bottom of the Cathedral.

Everyone below them clears out in seconds. Jack braces for an impact, but instead, they land lightly on the grass, and he feels a bit ridiculous.

"Honestly, I'd expected something a little more... Interesting." Pitch disdainfully surveys the Cathedral from his perch on the wall. "You two know who I've come for," Pitch says with another toothy smile, disappearing into the shadows.

"We have to get everyone out now," Jack whispers to Rapunzel.

She nods. "Of course, but how?"

"Jack!" A familiar blue and white blur hug-attacks him, squishing the air out of his lungs.

"Hey, Jamie!" Jack ruffles his friend's hair when Jamie finally releases him.

"Jack, who was that guy?"

"His name is... Um... For the most part, Pitch Black. Or the Nightmare King," he answers. "Hey, Jamie..."

The younger boy jumps up in the air. "Yeah?"

"Listen... While we were gone, we-" Jack is suddenly interrupted by the Cathedral ceiling making an angry splintering noise.

"What was that?" Jamie asks.

Rapunzel unconsciously lifts a few inches off the ground. "Maybe it's Pitch."

The steel makes another screeching noise that never heralds good, and then everything caves in.

* * *

"Bunny, North, have you seen Pitch anywhere?" Tooth asks. "Sandy doesn't know where he is, and I never saw him leave."

"I do not know where Pitch is," North says slowly. "But I have a guess..."

"That underwater dome," Bunny chimes in. "I'd bet my boomerangs on it. I knew we should've kept a closer eye on him..."

North sighs. "We had better get sleigh ready."

"O-okay, sounds good," Tooth agrees, wings beating the air anxiously. She zips away in the direction of the workshop's main hangar in a hurry.

"North, he has a huge lead on us, and he teleports. We won't be able to catch him in the sleigh," Bunny points out.

"There is no other option," North answers, standing up and taking his two sabers off the wall.

Bunny tugs at his oversized ears. "Well, I could run there. Be back in a jiffy."

"And we would follow in sleigh?" North considers this for a moment. "Is better to travel together, no?"

"I could bring Tooth, probably," Bunny adds. "If she didn't mind being carried."

Finally, North shakes his head. "I have invented a... how do you say? Snow ball of glass."

"A snowglobe?" Bunny ventures. "A paperweight?"

"Snowglobe, yes. We can use it to follow Pitch. If it does not malfunction..." North shrugs. "Is a risk we must take."

* * *

"Oh, mate, my way is definitely safer," Bunny says apprehensively, looking over the side of the sleigh with an expression of terror. This only makes North laugh in a way that seems slightly sadistic to Bunny.

"Is mostly safe," North reassures him unhelpfully. "Sandy, activate force shield."

"Why would we need that?" Bunny squeaks, though he'd never admit that to anyone.

Sandy nods emphatically. _Nautilus-Nero-underwater_, he says, using his golden sand to draw pictures for them.

"Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne?" Tooth asks.

Sandy nods again, beaming.

"Twenty thousand leagues under the sea?" Bunny mutters to himself, "Now I _know_ my way is safer..."

* * *

Hiccup squints at Jack and Rapunzel's faint outlines up by the cracks in the Cathedral, but then Toothless paws at his leg urgently. "What, bud? I'm trying to-"

Toothless grabs Hiccup's sleeve and starts to drag him away from the window.

"Hey, stop that!" Hiccup says sternly, swatting Toothless's nose.

Merida tries to yank the dragon off of his arm, but doesn't manage it. "Why is he doing that?"

"I dunno, maybe we should just follow him..." Hiccup relents and says, "Fine. Where are we going?"

The dragon instantly releases Hiccup and wags his tail like an oversized dog. Then he scampers deeper into level two of the complex, with the confused Hiccup and Merida in tow.

* * *

They didn't die.

Jack had to check twice to make sure they didn't actually die.

The top half of the Cathedral is completely caved in, and water leaks slowly through the cracks. But something's stuck in between the ocean and the Cathedral, and it looks like... a sleigh?  
"I told you snowglobe was safe," a Russian-accented voice says loudly.

"I think that's North," Rapunzel whispers to Jack. "And he has the other Guardians with him."

Jamie tugs Jack's sleeve. "Who're they?"

"This is like a bad dream," Jack mutters. "They're the Guardians. Kind of like us, but not really."

"Oh. Why are they here?"

"Good question, kiddo. Stay here with Rapunzel. I'm going to find out," Jack announces, drawing immediate protest from Rapunzel and Jamie.

"Hey, wait a second!" Jamie says indignantly.

Rapunzel huffs, "Is it because I'm a girl?"

"No, I just thought-" Jack starts to defend himself.

"You thought wrong. We're so going with you. C'mon, Jamie." Rapunzel strides off towards the Guardians without waiting, and Jamie and Jack have to run to catch up.

"Ah, here is Jack!" North says warmly, jumping down from the souped-up sleigh. "Have you seen Pitch?"

"We saw him a few minutes ago. Why are you here?" Jack asks. "Not for the socializing."

North's smile turns grim. "To find Pitch before anything... ah, _happens_."

"Pitch told Jack and Rapunzel that they knew who he came for," Jamie offers helpfully. "Does that count as happening?"

"Who'd he come for?" asks Bunny.

Tooth suddenly swoops down and lands next to North on the grass. "For Lunar, of course. He'd wanted to come a lot sooner, but we stopped him. And I know Pitch would never kill Lunar if we told him not to... but the Nightmare King doesn't really care about all that."

"We'd better get to Lunar's office now, then," Jack says. "We know the way."

* * *

**Author's Note**: Hey there, readers! So as you probably know, next month is November! This means it's National Novel Writing Month, which I shall participate in once again. Updates may or may not happen at that time. But I'll make them happen, most likely. They'll be shorter, as I will have a 2k word quota each day of November.

Still not beta-edited, so shoot me any edits via PM :D please and thank you. I called the Winchesters, but they were busy. Something about too many roommates? Whatever. You never know with them.

**Hey, I have a poll! You can decide what ship is in my new ROTG fic, Aetas Auriolus. If you don't vote,****_ there will be _**_**no**_**_ ships_****. So gogogo! You can find the poll on my profile. (You'll get kudos, my eternal love, and a promo on my tumblr if you leave your URL in my PM. Fo realsies.)**

Chapter Soundtrack: Parachutes, Coldplay


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